


A Ghost from Christmas Past

by Arej



Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [23]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is a furnace, Crowley 'helps' in the bookshop, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dyslexic Crowley (Good Omens), Fluff, M/M, Other, all in good fun so if i borked that one i apologize, some mild commentary on the various purposes of spookiness, these two are ridiculously soft for each other help, they're not really male but it's m/m since i used male pronouns throughout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21929791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arej/pseuds/Arej
Summary: Day 23 for the spectacular advent calendar of prompts.Aziraphale has a little surprise for Crowley when it comes to the matter of Christmas ghosts.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561027
Comments: 14
Kudos: 141





	A Ghost from Christmas Past

After the fifth time Crowley scares off a customer by pretending to be a ghost haunting the bookshop, Aziraphale flips the sign over to closed and calls it a day. The fact that it’s hardly noon, and he’d only opened shop at ten, is unimportant. There have been browsers in and out all morning - all two hours of it - and they’ve put up with more than enough strangers in their space. The holidays are…trying.

“Do you think they’ll stop coming if they believe it’s haunted?”

Crowley, chuckling as he dutifully reshelves the books he’d toppled, one after the other, slow and deliberate and then all at once when the browsing would-be customer squeaked in alarm, shakes his head. “Nah. You’ll just end up with a different crowd, one that likes that sort of thing. I’ll have to switch tactics, then.”

Aziraphale watches him set romance novels back on the shelves with unerring precision; no matter how unorthodox an organizational system he employs, Crowley always seems to know exactly how it works. The books, similarly interested, flutter around him at approximately waist height, looking for all the world like a flock of adoring birds. 

It’s a sentiment Aziraphale knows well.

Crowley has made certain that, despite each book’s dramatic dive, not a single spine cracked on the hardwood below - Aziraphale had watched them fall, not with concern but with amusement, as each and every volume halted a bare centimeter above the shop floor. He could have stopped them higher; it’s plain by their behavior now that Crowley has the fine control for that sort of sustained miracle. Instead, he’d let them plummet, much like any regular books knocked over by a ghost might do. Had even added the thudding sound effects, despite each novel landing on the slimmest cushion of air.

Now that he’s turned his mischief on the unsuspecting - but thoroughly deserving - customers that dare walk through the bookshop’s door, it’s becoming clear how much care Crowley takes with Aziraphale’s things. Every book is tucked gently back on its shelf, handled like something precious, old and new alike, and Aziraphale loves him all the more for it.

“- almost as bad as the Victorians,” Crowley finishes, settling the last fluttering book-bird back into place.

“I’m sorry?”

“You remember - all fussed about ghosts, they were, seances and mediums and all that.” The demon waves a hand expansively to encompass the vastness of _all that_. “This modern crop might give them a run for their money, though.”

“Perhaps.” Now that Crowley has sauntered close enough, Aziraphale reaches out for him, pulls his wandering serpent into a warm embrace. “There’s quite the excitement about Halloween, these days.”

“Yeah, but it’s a different kind of excitement.” Crowley winds his arms around the angel’s waist, tucks his face into the soft slope of his shoulder, and shuffles them blindly towards the back room. It is a shuffle Aziraphale is pleasantly familiar with, and he goes without complaint. There’s a chill in the shop, born of demonic energy and carrying just the right bite to suggest a haunting to an already spooked human; a chill that Crowley, despite having put there, will have trouble shaking. At times like this, Crowley’s only focus is warmth - something Aziraphale, now Crowley’s favorite heat source, can and will supply in abundance.

The chill _could_ easily be vanquished with angelic energy, but this way is far more enjoyable. 

“Today’s about freedoms,” Crowley is saying as they shuffle slowly, swaying together. “Inversion celebrations, or festivals, whatever the keen ones are calling it these days. The spook is still there, but it’s different. Weighs differently, when it carries all that meaning.”

“It is rather popular with the queer community,” Aziraphale agrees. He tips himself backward onto the waiting sofa, pulls Crowley with him and settles them lengthwise there. Crowley snakes his arms up to tuck them under the angel’s shoulders, threads his spindly legs between Aziraphale’s thicker ones, and does his level best to burrow into the soft warmth on offer.

“’Xactly,” he replies. The words are somewhat lost in Aziraphale’s skin, so Crowley squirms and shuffles until it’s his eyes tucked into the curve between neck and shoulder instead of his mouth. “But the Victorians - they loved the spooky stuff for being spooky. Ghosts in the walls. Ghosts in the lights. Ghosts everywhere.”

“Ghosts on Christmas Eve,” Aziraphale muses, and Crowley wriggles excitedly.

“Yes! Yes - ghosts on Christmas Eve. They were - were _life lessons_ , or whatnot.”

“I think most ghost stories are meant to be life lessons, in some form or another.”

“Yeah, but - Dickens.”

“What about him, dear?”

“Wrote the famous one, yeah? People are obsessed with it even now. Christmas ghosts.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale agrees, curious where Crowley might be going with this, if he has a point or is just letting his mouth free-associate during the hunt for warmth. “It’s a very well known story today.”

“Hard to spin that one - told Hell it was a win because it gives people an excuse.”

It’s impossible to tell whether this is a genuine train of thought or a wild goose chase, but Aziraphale is content to follow Crowley wherever his mind is going. He slides his hands up to cover the demon’s neck, the only bit of him still exposed to the lingering chill. “An excuse for what?”

“Well, if a Christmas ghost doesn’t show up to teach you a lesson, you can’t be all bad, yeah?” Crowley squirms again, until his head is tucked beneath the angel’s chin, soft red hair tickling at his throat. “Took a few decades for them to buy it, but once they did, they were very impressed.”

Aziraphale hums noncommittally, sliding one hand rhythmically along Crowley’s spine. Crowley wriggles again.

“I didn’t, you know.”

“Didn’t what, dearest?”

“Do it. Encourage it.” Crowley’s voice has gone muffled again, buried in Aziraphale’s jumper. “The story, the - the mindset. ’S just what I put in the report; I didn’t actually _want_ people to start thinking like that. Look where it’s gotten them.”

“It certainly wasn’t my intention, I’ll admit.”

The restless squirming and shifting stops under his hands; the muffled voice clears, as if Crowley’s face has tilted in confusion. “Your intention?”

“Well, yes. I rather had a hand in inspiring that one.”

“You…” Crowley’s face pops into view at the bottom of his vision, golden eyes narrowed in study. “Why? You weren’t a fan of all that ghost business, if I remember -”

“But _you_ were,” Aziraphale interrupts, for the pleasure of watching Crowley’s eyes go wide, the tips of his ears and the edges of his cheekbones go pink. “What was that - yes. ‘Big spooky fan,’ as I recall.”

There is a breathless pause. Crowley’s voice is soft as he asks, “You did - you inspired that. For me?”

“Not entirely on purpose, I’ll admit. I was lamenting your general disinterest in Christmas to Boz, and your love of ghost stories, and before I knew it he’d published that little novella. Said he’d bring you around,” Aziraphale chuckles. “Not that you needed bringing around to anything, my dear, but it is a lovely story.”

“You’re telling me Dickens wrote _A Christmas Carol_ because of you.”

“Not because of me, I don’t believe. He’d already had the idea. I just…encouraged him along, I suspect.”

“Alright, Dickens published _A Christmas Carol_ because of you, then,” Crowley persists, and Aziraphale - far from being embarrassed - smiles.

“If anything it’s because of _you_ , darling,” he corrects. “I couldn’t stop talking about you, not to anyone.”

“Ngk,” Crowley replies, and eyes and cheekbones and flushed ear tips disappear when he buries his face in Aziraphale’s shoulder again.

Quite pleased with the reaction, Aziraphale resumes his casual stroking of the demon’s spine, making sure to settle one hand on the back of his neck to protect against the chill. He’s beginning to think Crowley might just drift off to sleep there, all his angles and edges settled into the soft cushion of angel beneath him, when Crowley speaks again.

“Will you read it to me?” he asks softly, quietly, and Aziraphale nearly melts.

Written words are hard, for Crowley; the print and his eyes don’t agree, and the letters, like Crowley himself, squirm restlessly whenever he tries to read. But he loves to listen - had, even before they settled into this new reality where they can cuddle like this, occasionally dropped by the shop with some new book he wanted to read but didn’t want to struggle through, and asked if Aziraphale might read it aloud to him with studied casualness. Aziraphale had mourned the invention of the audio book for nearly a month when he first learned of it, until Crowley had breezed into the bookshop, a new astronomy text tucked under one arm, and handed it over with a questioning eyebrow and a smile.

Which is to say - reading aloud is something they’ve done for quite some time; they have just finished Wilde’s _A House of Pomegranates_ , not two nights previous. So there’s no reason such a simple request should turn Aziraphale’s blood to liquid honey like this, but it does.

“Of course, my love,” he replies, and it feels like the sun has come down to settle in his chest. Crowley, as if sensing another heat source to bask in - metaphorical or otherwise - squirms impossibly closer.

“Nap first,” he declares, though the words come out warped around a yawn, so he repeats them. “Nap first, then lunch. Then reading.”

The sun is a helium balloon in his chest, or the helium balloon is full of sunlight, or both; Aziraphale fills one hand with Crowley’s shirt, the other with silken fire, and holds there so he doesn’t float away. “Nap first,” he agrees, and he can feel Crowley’s lips curve into a smile against his skin. “Then lunch, and I’ll read to you after.”

Crowley hums contentedly and cuddles closer. “Love you,” he murmurs. His voice has gone silken and slow, the way it always does right before he falls asleep; Aziraphale holds him close, closer, as close as their corporations can bear, but soft for all that.

“Oh, darling,” he whispers, overcome. “I love you, too.”


End file.
